On December 30, 2008, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit upheld a $9,063,000 jury award to a former prisoner, later exonerated by DNA evidence, whose criminal trial was rendered unfair by a police detective who investigated his case.
In September 1989, Alejandro Dominguez, then fifteen years old, ...
Immigration rights advocates won a short-lived victory in June 2009, when a U.S. District Court in New York ordered the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to respond to a petition for rulemaking that requested the adoption of uniform national standards for conditions at immigration detention facilities.
The petition, drafted by ...
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has reversed a grant of summary judgment to a Bureau of Prisons (BOP) doctor accused of denying a death row prisoner needed eye surgery.
Arboleda Ortiz, a federal prisoner currently on death row at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, ...
Federal and state prisons across the country are slowly beginning to offer email access to prisoners in addition to traditional postal mail service – in some cases limited to receiving email messages, and in others allowing prisoners to send replies.
Leading the charge is the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). ...
U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts famously said during his confirmation hearing that judges are like umpires, each calling balls and strikes as they come. But is that really a fair comparison? “Batters” like Kevin Phelps and other prisoners who are fighting their criminal cases will tell you ...
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n May 19, 2009, U.S. District Court Judge Walter S. Smith, Jr. denied a motion to dismiss filed by McLennan County, Texas in a suit challenging the constitutionality of the county jail’s policy of strip searching all pre-trial detainees.
The lawsuit, filed by William Robert Bradshaw and Randall Lee ...
A directive issued by the Indiana Department of Corrections (IDOC) that limits the award of educational sentence credit to only one Associate’s Degree cannot be applied retroactively without running afoul of the ex post facto clause of the U.S. and state Constitutions, the Indiana Court of Appeals decided on June ...
There is nothing like a good sex scandal to get things stirred up in Washington, and it’s even better when the scandal involves the likes of U.S. Senator John Ensign, a conservative Republican and member of the Pentecostal Church who for years has railed against pornography, promiscuity and other forms ...
In March 2008, U.S. District Judge Joan B. Gottschal held that persons seeking executive clemency in Illinois have a protected liberty interest in having their petitions decided within a reasonable time by the governor. However, that ruling was reversed by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals just over a year ...
Nebraska prison officials cannot delay paying $204,856.28 in attorney’s fees and costs awarded in a lawsuit where they were found to have violated the First Amendment and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) by failing to post a prayer schedule and to provide a prisoner with kosher ...
